Robotic or autonomous vehicles (sometimes referred to as mobile robotic platforms) generally have a robotic control system that controls the operational systems of the vehicle. In a vehicle that is limited to a transportation function, the operational systems may include steering, braking, transmission, and throttle systems. In October 2005, five autonomous vehicles (of twenty-three finalist vehicles) successfully completed the “Grand Challenge” of the United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration (DARPA), a competition requiring fully robotic vehicles to traverse a course covering more than one hundred miles. These vehicles were outfitted with robotic control systems in which a bank of computers controlled the operational systems of the vehicle, such as the steering, braking, transmission, and throttle, subject to autonomous decisions made by programs on board the vehicle in response to sensor input, without human intervention on the course itself.
Robotic control system sensor inputs may include data associated with the vehicle's destination, preprogrammed path information, and detected obstacle information. Based on one or more of data associated with the information above, the vehicle's movements are controlled. Detecting obstacles, however, may provide false data points, incomplete obstacle data, and/or require large amounts of electronic storage capacity and processing power to compute the relevant data points. Additionally, combining obstacle data with trajectory or directional information may result in vehicle movements that may be characterized as jerky or incorrect vehicle movements.